Loupe & Lightbox: Tracking Your Gut Feeling

The GutFeeling project is about exploring alternative forms of self-tracking cultures. We invited experts to live with a probe and over time reflect on their experience of the relations between their gut and their brain. This inspired a design brief for an alternative gut tracking device which then led to Loupe and Lightbox. Together they operate to externalize gut biota for closer examination, aesthetic appreciation, and reflection on the self. The device represents an example of self-tracking as cultivation—building a longer-term relationship with the self as something to be nurtured, tended to, and cared about.

Project team:

Sarah Homewood, Laurens Boer, Harvey Bewley, Tom Jenkins, Teresa Almeida, Anna Vallgårda

Publications:

Boer, L., Bewley, H., Jenkins, T., Homewood, S., Almeida, T., & Vallgårda, A. (2020, July). Gut-Tracking as Cultivation. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (pp. 561-574).

Jenkins, T., Boer, L., Homewood, S., Almeida, T., & Vallgårda, A. (2020, December). Designing with Emerging Science: Developing an Alternative Frame for Self-Tracking. In 32nd Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 128-140).